


take me out of this place i'm in

by thegroovygatsby



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, and then strexcorp fucks everything up, basically desert bluffs sucks, their relationship is actually pretty sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:45:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegroovygatsby/pseuds/thegroovygatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cecil wants to go back to night vale, but desert bluffs wants him to stay right where he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take me out of this place i'm in

Cecil wakes up in Desert Bluffs, clawing at the stagnant air above his head and gnashing his teeth together in some futile defense against the hard sunlight that cuts through the crack in the drapes. He has the faint sense that something is wrong, that he has left something unfinished elsewhere. He’s woken up like this every day for the past three weeks. He breathes almost too quickly.

Kevin reaches over and drags his thin fingers across Cecil’s ribs. Cecil’s breathing slows before it evens. _Oh._ Maybe it’s time to go back.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispers, leaning down to press a kiss into Kevin’s hair. Kevin makes a tiny noise in his throat and shifts in bed minutely. Cecil reaches down to rub a thumb against his cheek, and Kevin’s eyes slide open like twin singularities.

“Cecil,” Kevin murmurs. Cecil exhales a gentle breath in response, and Kevin senses that something is about to change in the same way a snake senses an earthquake about to happen. “I was never keeping you here.”

“No. You weren’t,” Cecil says.

Kevin closes his eyes again. “Well, then.”

“Kevin,” Cecil’s voice is unsteady. He clears his throat.

“I can’t come back with you, Cecil.” Kevin draws the blanket tighter around his body, a quiet protection against the morning.

“I know,” Cecil says, staring at a point somewhere beyond the viscera-splattered wall. “You’re not like me. You’re nothing like me.”

The sheets rustle but Kevin doesn’t say anything.

Cecil looks down at his own hands and their protruding veins. He looks down at his own cracked fingernails and the dry blood caked underneath them.

“I’m not like you,” Cecil says finally.

“Okay,” Kevin says. He sounds tired, now.

“Kevin,” Cecil whispers, but he’s not sure what he’s pleading for.

Kevin’s voice, when it comes, is odd in its normalcy. “You could stay here, Cecil. If you wanted to.”

Cecil ducks his head. “I can’t,” he says miserably. “It’s killing me, Kevin. Desert Bluffs is killing me.”

Kevin just curls in on himself even more firmly under the covers and it’s clear that something in the room has changed. The silence is brittle and everything seems somehow sharper, as if even the dust could draw blood.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Cecil says.

“Then don’t.”

“Kevin.”

“You knew the terms of this—this—of _us—”_

“No. I thought I did, though. I only—thought I did. I never wanted—”

“Okay, Cecil, sure. Tell me you never wanted any of it. If you’re going to leave, you should go now.”

Cecil doesn’t move.

Kevin sits up in bed, throwing off the covers and pointing at Cecil. “I mean it, Cecil! I don’t want to hurt you, but the town—the town might make me do it!”

Cecil looks uncertain, but still doesn’t move. “The town doesn’t control you, Kevin.”

“Cecil, look at me! Look at my eyes!” Kevin’s smile is large and the skin of his face is taut with something like desperation. After a beat Cecil steps in, taking Kevin’s face in his hands and studying the dark eyes. At first he sees nothing—but then, at the inner corners, nearly invisible:

“Copyright Strexcorp,” Cecil whispers.

“Go look in the mirror,” Kevin whispers back. Cecil stares at him for a second before removing his hands and stepping slowly around him to get to the bathroom. Kevin stays rooted in place.

“Kevin,” Cecil moans once he sees his reflection. There’s half a barcode like a horrible tattoo on his forehead.

“It’s only going to get darker,” Kevin says, still in the bedroom. He’s not speaking very loudly, but Cecil has no problem hearing him. “The town— _Desert Bluffs_ doesn’t want you to leave.”

Something in his voice is different.

Cecil stops looking at his reflection to turn his head back to the bedroom.

“Kevin?”

Kevin is facing away from him.

Cecil takes a step out of the bathroom. “…Kevin?”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Kevin says, but there’s something in his voice, something insidious under his tongue, like black slime filling his throat and dripping off of his teeth. It sticks to his words.

Cecil moans again. “No, Kevin…”

“You should stay here,” Kevin’s voice has gotten lower and there’s a sort of ominous chanting layered under his tone, “You should stay here with me…”

“Kevin, I can’t, Kevin, I have to go back to Night Vale,” Cecil’s eyes dart around the room, looking for something, anything he can use to protect himself.

 _“Night Vale!”_ Kevin screams and suddenly he’s facing Cecil, he’s between Cecil and the door, he’s blocking Cecil’s way out and his eyes are black and his smile is terrible.

Cecil finds himself frozen in place, the obsidian eyes locked onto his and his forehead burning where the barcode is, he assumes, darkening.

“Do not speak of Night Vale again,” Kevin hisses, a bubbling sludge dripping from his mouth, “You belong to Desert Bluffs now.”

“I do _not,”_ Cecil snaps. “Stop it, Kevin.”

Kevin’s tongue flicks out. “I am not Kevin. I am Strexcorp. I am Desert Bluffs. You will become Desert Bluffs. Your innards will coat the wall of every room in this house. And you will be grateful.”

“No, I _won’t!”_ Cecil shouts. He finally moves, scrambling over to the bed so he can reach underneath it and grab Kevin’s favorite disemboweling knife. He spins around and Kevin is there, close enough to touch, close enough for Cecil to see that the black eyes are flat; they have no depth, they don’t even reflect his own face back at him—and Cecil knows that this isn’t his Kevin. He lifts his arm and shoves the knife blindly forwards, and he knows he must have hit something because the monster falls to its knees and lets out a hacking cough, the black sludge burbling over its lips and dripping onto its chest. Cecil twists the knife as hard as he can before bolting for the door.

He’s in the doorway when he hears the whisper from behind him.

“Cecil,” Kevin says, voice thick and wet.

“Kevin,” Cecil says, not turning around.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin says. Cecil doesn’t answer. “I wish…I wish I could come with you.”

“You can’t.”

Kevin lets out a little wrenching noise, half laugh and half sob.

“Kevin—”

“I’m still human,” Kevin says. “Somewhere. Aren’t I?”

Cecil turns slowly and walks back to Kevin, on his knees at the side of the bed. He kneels down to be level with him.

“You need to leave,” Kevin whispers. One shaking hand comes up to trace a square on Cecil’s forehead.

“Kevin.”

_“Cecil.”_

Cecil takes the hand touching his forehead and moves it to his cheek, nuzzling into Kevin’s palm.

“Go,” Kevin says with an air of finality. Cecil complies.

He walks out the door and doesn’t look back.

When Cecil gets back to Night Vale, the first thing he does is rummage around in his apartment for his old radio. He hasn’t used it in a while since he’s usually on the other side of the broadcast, but he’s sure it still works. He twists the dial until it pops off, and with a burst of static, he’s tuned into Desert Bluffs Community Radio just in time to catch the end of Kevin’s show.

 _“…and remember, listeners, whether you’re here in Desert Bluffs or somewhere very far away, perhaps even somewhere as far and strange as Night Vale, Strexcorp knows you. Strexcorp is you. Strexcorp is_ everything! _Until next time, Desert Bluffs. Until next time.”_

Cecil shuts off the radio and cradles his head in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> based on a lyric prompt from a tumblr friend asking for cecil/kevin and lyrics from daughter's "human": "woken up like an animal/teeth ready for sinking/.../underneath this skin there's a human/buried deep within there's a human/and despite everything i'm still human/but i think i'm dying here"


End file.
